Project Title:Mapping and Characterization of the Oculina Banks Habitat Area
of
Particular Concern(OHAPC) off the East Coast of Florida.

Ocean and Space Agencies Join
Forces to Explore Deep Coral Banks.

Wilmington, NC—Beginning October 16, days
after launching the Atlantis space shuttle from Kennedy Space Center,
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will join the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other ocean
scientists to go in the opposite direction to study deep sea corals
off Cape Canaveral, Florida.

With funding support from NOAA’s National
Marine Fisheries Service, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington’s
National Undersea Research Center (NURC/UNCW) will lead an eight-day
expedition to map the Oculina Banks marine protected area. NURC/UNCW
is one of six regional centers around the nation in NOAA’s National
Undersea Research Program. The NASA ship Liberty Star, managed by NASA’s
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and operated by the
United Space Alliance out of Port Canaveral will support the survey.
The Liberty Star is one of two ships that recover the Space Shuttle’s
Solid Rocket Boosters and return them to Kennedy Space Center for refurbishment.

John Reed, co-investigator from Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution,
suggests that the Oculina Banks deep coral reefs are “unique and
occur nowhere else on earth.” They are formed by a single species
of coral, the Ivory Tree Coral, Oculina varicosa. Corals grow in many
places on the ocean floor, but here they form pinnacles of up to 100
feet tall, growing below the Gulf Stream at depths of 200 to 300 feet.
Like their shallow coral reef cousins, the reefs are critical habitat
for a wide diversity of fish and invertebrates. Popular food fish including
several species of grouper breed on the reefs.

Fig. (Piece of Ivory Tree
Coral, Oculina varicosa, with small crab in branches; coral forms 30
meter high reefs that are refuge for marine life, and breeding grounds
for commercial fish such as groupers. Photo credit: J. Reed).

In the early 1980s, Harbor Branch scientists
working from small submarines discovered that large areas of Oculina
coral beds were destroyed, most likely by fishing trawlers. In 1984,
NOAA designated over 90 square miles of the Oculina Banks as a research
reserve closed to trawling. In 1994, the same area was closed to all
bottom fishing, and in 2000, it was expanded to 300 square miles, now
stretching 60 miles from Fort Pierce to Cape Canaveral. Rock shrimp
trawlers have been caught dragging their steel doors and nets through
the reserve as recently as 2001.

The National Marine Fisheries Service has set
management goals for the reserve area intended to protect the reefs
and restore declining reef fish populations, without ruining the net
fishery. They also realize the need for increased public awareness of
the reefs and problems through research, outreach, and education.

According to Andrew Shepard, expedition coordinator
from the Undersea Center at UNCW, “meeting the Fisheries Service’s
management objectives for the Oculina reserve area requires more scientific
data and information about the health of the Banks, and probable causes
for the loss of coral habitat. Corals can die for a number of reasons,
such as disease and temperature change. We know there is illegal fishing
in the closed area, but how much does it contribute to degradation of
the reefs versus other possible factors?”

Complicating the problem of studying and understanding
the reefs is their location under the Gulf Stream, a river in the sea
that can flow four to five knots over the Oculina reserve area. “Diving
is required to study most reef environments,” notes Mr. Shepard,
‘but this is no easy feat in 250 feet of water with currents that
can take a diver’s mask off.”

From October 16 to October 23, Seafloor Systems
Inc. from Oregon will deploy a sophisticated mapping system from the
Liberty Star to provide the first high resolution, three-dimensional
map of the Oculina Banks. The multi-beam sonar system can survey up
to 20 square miles per day at less than a meter resolution, revealing
shipwrecks and reefs never mapped or seen before.

The survey team will include college students from UNCW and the College
of Charleston, standing watch around the clock during the eight day
cruise. Every day, the students will send logs back to be posted on
the Project Oceanica web site http://oceanica.cofc.edu
. Leslie Sautter, professor of geology at the College of Charleston
oversees the Web site and considers this type of hands-on field experience
to be critical and often lacking in the learning process for college
students.

The survey results will be used to guide another
expedition in the spring of 2003, when the reef fish spawn, again using
NASA’s ship, plus their underwater robot and an acoustic hydrophone
system for listening to fish and vessel noise. New exploration and discoveries
will be guidedby the new charts.